Breakups, haircuts, spring 🍃
And a whole lot of Bangalore
Dearest,
It has been a while since I’ve written to you. I suppose there’s a shapeshifting period in any long-term creative project, and the past year has been that for this newsletter. For a while now, I have only shown up here when I have had words that were clear they needed to be written. Today, however, I come to you unrehearsed, unprepared, more confused than certain, more lost than found.
This is an email of life updates, let’s catch up?
A few weeks ago, my partner and I decided to end our relationship. It wasn’t a long one, we’d only been seeing each other a few months. But what we shared felt real and grounded in a way that was new for me. After all, this was the first person I seriously dated since my twenties.
I spent the past half decade drastically single. All those years I worked on myself made me different in a romantic equation too, and I loved discovering the unfamiliar pathways my brain was now taking through attraction, attachment, problem-solving, and self-soothing. The tools, lenses, and narratives I’d devoted years to working on were finally developed enough to pay off in this context.
Being in a romantic equation also challenged areas of my life that had been stagnant for a while. I found myself eager to meet those challenges, I couldn’t wait to see who I would become in that process. Perhaps what I grieve the most today is losing that person.
Sure, I can (and probably will) work on the parts of my life that I realized needed work. But I won’t be the same person who committed to that work. I won’t move through my days with glee shimmering atop my tired bones, or tap in that drowsy late night text to my partner to report that I’ve somehow survived. I won’t build with the steady relief that all of this intention and love has a resting place beyond the self.
I grieve this woman who momentarily swayed her way through me, a passionate whirl of desire, wisdom, and grit. God, she was magnificent.
I marked her exit with a big haircut. If she was gone, the world had to know of her existence, even just through the visible marks of her departure.
Recently, a few people told me that hair has energy and I believe them. After my haircut, my lens on the world has been feeling ever so slightly reoriented, just a little to the side, but different.
When I am not obsessing over styling my new hairdo or plotting fantasies of escaping to the seaside, I grieve the loss of my relationship.
And listen, it is an odd thing to grieve in spring.
Fresh blossoms remind me of the tenderness of our beginnings. Pink trumpets, golden trumpets, jacarandas, bougainvilleas, rain trees, it is cruel how beautiful my city looks these days. Then again, heartbreak in Bangalore would be terrible in any season — let me explain.
Last year, I learnt that Bangalore’s avenue trees were planted inspired by Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara. So of course I read the first translation I could get my hands on. If you haven’t already read it, the book is one long sensuous poem, divided into sections by the season.
In the 1800s, its visually evocative text moved the botanist Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel to bring in saplings from across the world to Bangalore and plant them such that in every season, the city would be teeming with flowers.
For Krumbiegel, Bangalore was meant to always feel like love. But for the heartbroken, he has ensured that any season here is a visceral ache, there is simply no good time to break up in this city!
All of which is to say that too often these days, I find myself pinpricked with loss and longing. And in calmer moments, there is a dull sense of a specific reality dissipating along the periphery of my mind.
I keep going by reminding myself to focus on where I am at, I know that there is no returning to the person I was before all this. But in this reach for somewhere else and journey back to the present, there is a dissolve, a sadness. And there is nothing to do but feel it.
That’s how things have been on my end. How have you been? Has spring been lovely for you? Has love been more fortunate? I hope so.
But in case you are struggling too, may I suggest a big haircut? I swear it helps.
💌
Love,
Soumya
Stuff I love ✨
An intention I have had for a while now is to bring the separate parts of my life together, my work, my friendships, my hobbies, and my writing. In that spirit, here are some things I’ve been exploring that I want to tell you about.
📚 I will be spending the next couple of months as a curator for Cubbon Reads, a silent reading community that meets up at Cubbon Park every Saturday. If you’re in Bangalore, come say hey. I’ll be there every alternate week, always ready to recommend a book or two or ten on this stunning city I call home.
📹 My friend Reema (whose wisdom I’ve often quoted here) made this video about the power of a woman’s No that I cannot get enough of. There is so much in this that all of us need to hear, but I’ll leave you with this one bit — pick the battles that matter to you and stop justifying yourself, your worth isn’t up for debate.
🔖 Last year, I tried to write a newsletter about the books I was reading, but it didn’t pan out as I’d hoped. So I put together a post with some of my favourite reads from 2024.
🌳 Getting to know nature more intimately has been one of the best things I’ve been doing for myself over the past few years. It’s offered me healing, health, perspective, and an unparalleled sense of groundedness. Some projects and recommendations on this front:
For a while now, I have been on a mission to visit as many lakes as possible in Bangalore. Last year, I got real serious about this goal and visited 12 lakes in 6 months. This year, my goal is 20 in 12 months. What I have learnt over the course of this adventure is that Bangalore’s interconnected lakes are all one big family, but they are each telling a slightly different story about this wonky, odd, luminous land. If you are interesting in listeneing, a few powerful lakes that I think everyone should check out are Yelahanka lake, Doddagubbi lake, and Kogilu lake.
My other nature-related goal for this year is to learn the name of a plant each week and paint it. To that end, I went for a nature walk with Wilderness Ways a couple of months ago. They introduce you to such a joyful way of exploration, do give it a go if you too are feeling curious about the natural world around you. Another useful resource for identification has been this Eco Edu Pocket Book on Avenue Trees.
Jam 🎵
I want you to listen to everything by Ganavya, but for today, this.
Thank you for reading! 💞
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Soumya,
I have thus far been a long-time lurker on your work (as I tend to be on most online media), enjoying and appreciating your words. But this one particularly moved me to comment, because it resonated with me so much.
I fell in love for the first time in my twenties— over two years ago now— and was with the woman I fell in love with for only a couple of months (which were no less magical, despite the short duration). It was a curious mix of the giddiness of adolescent love, and the revelation that comes from a more mature partnership. But when it ended, I found myself alone in my grief— here was something that had transformed me so profoundly that I would never be the same again, and yet I relished this changed self of mine like I hadn't any that came before it. (In this vein, a particularly resonant line from your writing: "... I won’t build with the steady relief that all of this intention and love has a resting place beyond the self.")
But I found my grief so summarily dismissed because this love had been my first, and so apparently short. You can imagine, then, what joy it has brought me to see your own kindred words, words that wouldn't have dismissed the grief I felt then.
When you wrote, "I grieve this woman who momentarily swayed her way through me, a passionate whirl of desire, wisdom, and grit. God, she was magnificent"— I felt it profoundly, for it's the kind of thing I would have said about my ex-partner. This line is probably going to live rent-free in my head, and I thank you for writing these words and sharing them.
I hope that you're able to work through this grief in your own time, and that the spring is more a source of comfort, of new and growing things that were once hidden but blossoming again anew.
I love how your brain works. I love learning about you and from you. The trees in Bangalore sound magical, what thought, planning in dedication. I would love to see them. The freedom of a haircut knows no comparison in my opinion and your new style lights you up.
Spring is a hard time, a strange time for grieving but I’ve learned over the many years, the longer you live you will find all seasons are filled with all things; including grief.
We are still under a blanket of snow, though the warmth graces us more often and the sky lightens for much longer already. Soon the first shoots of grass and the delicate wild crocus blooms will appear to remind me that in middle of grief, there is still birth, like and new possibilities. Thank you for your words, your lessons and your friendship.